Diary of a sex romp (part 2)

Last night I sat down with the express purpose of getting the cymbal hits down for the verse. I think, with the drum loops I have, the verses are going to be very sparse for this demo. I created two tracks for the separate hits, because had I put them both on one the decay on the first hit would have been cut off after half a beat, and that would have sounded really weird. After I got the timing right on the two hits, it was merely a matter of copy and paste into the correct locations. Come see the boring side of art, also known as the Lenny Kravitz "Fly Away" school of songwriting. Although I'm much more a fan of the organic approach, raelity is that when you're working with drum loops on a computer recording medai, you're dealing with cut and paste.

At any rate, this was mostly scut work, and I got through it relatively quickly. Once they were all in place I played through the song to make sure everything was set correctly and prepared to move on to the next part.

But before the future, the past. Yesterday I mentioned that I had two more things to do on the hi-hat track: to substitute the "open" hi-hat on the chorus and to Normalize the track. I decided to hold off on both. I'm going to skip altogether using the "open" hi-hats on the chorus for two reasons: 1)Because the timing on them is different (the decay is longer) and I didn't feel like fooling around with the Time Stretch until I got them right, and 2)While thinking about it, I realized that the drum loop for the chorus is going to already have a hi-hat in it anyway, (or maybe a ride), so I don't particularly need to double it. As for the Normalizing, it only takes a few seconds to do and is an automated process, but I decided to hold off on it until the entire drum part is done. No reason, really. I just decided I don't really need to do it now.

And now to the part that caused me problems last night, and will continue to cause more going forward. A quick note about the Time Stretch option. Time Stretch is like my car. I sort of know how to use it, but if you get down to the nuts and bolts of how it works, I couldn't explain it to you.

Since I'm grabbing all my drum loops from the same tempo folder, (Hard 90 if you didn;t remember), theoretically you'd think that by using the same values on the Time Stretch, any loop should stretch out equally and match right up with whatever was stretched out before on another track. Not the case. Why, you ask? I have no idea. None, whatsoever.

So, when I grabbed a loop that I thought might make a good chorus pattern, dropped it on it's own track, Time Stretchedwith the same parameters as what I used for the hi-hats....it didn't match up.

Uhhh......

I fucked around with different options for this for about an hour before I stumbled on what I think I'll have to do to make it work. Unfortunately, it will create more work for me though. (And work that involves actual math...bleh!) Unless I think of anohter solution before I get home tonight, I will have to settle on a loop I like for the chorus and Time Stretch it to an appropriate tempo. Then I will have to set two marker points, one at the beginning of the loop and one at the end. These marker points basically say: "The loop starts at this time and ends at this time and is precisely this long." I will then subtract the starting time from the end time to get the new lentgh of the loop, divide that number by four, and that number is what I will have to set the Time Stretch for one hi-hat hit. Why four? Because the song is in 4/4 which means four beats per measure, or in this case, four hi-hat hits.

I kid you not, actual math is going into the recording of this song. Is this what Trent Reznor feels like?

Once I figure that out, I will just have to redo the hi-hat track to fit, because it's unlikely I'll be getting everything at the tempo it's at right now; it will likely be slightly faster or slower. I won't have to re-Time Stretch the cymbal hits, because of the nature of them, they just hit and fade on the 1. I'll just have to move them to fit, but that should be quick.

Anyway, that's my job for tonight. If I can get it half done, I'll be in good shape. I want to use by half stack to record the guitars; I'm not planning on doing it until the weekend, as it will be loud and I can do it during the day so as to (hopefully) not annoy my neighbors upstairs and landlord downstairs too much. In fact, I'm hoping they'll all be out. So I have until then to get the drums done, or mostly so. I realized last night the drums don't have to be totally done before I leave for vacation, just enough for me to do the guitar part right. I'm going to have my laptop with me when I go, so I can work on the drum parts durning the longer car rides if necessary.

Now, you may be saying to yourself: "Self, this sounds like an awful lot of work for one three and a half minute sex romp that in reality probably isn't even all that good." But that would miss the point. The real upside to this is that by having to figure all this stuff out, I learn more about the recording program.

Still, this whole thing will probably become a lot easier when Eric gets back from Australia and gets himself a new drum set. Then I can just say, "Dude, set up your kit. I'm coming over with the laptop and a six pack.....uh twelve pack."

Hi, Eric. Muhahahahahahahaha!